The Moz Blog

Visualizing the Marketing Funnel - Whiteboard Friday

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we will be talking about visualizing and measuring your marketing funnel. All too often basic web analytics can mislead marketers which can lead to investing in the wrong channels. Understanding what content drives people to your site and when will allow you to make much more informed decisions on where to invest your money.

Thanks for joining us and don't forget to leave your comments below. Enjoy!

The SEOmoz Inbound Marketing Funnel

Video Transcription

Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're talking about the inbound marketing funnel. Specifically, we're talking about why basic web analytics can often fail and mislead marketers in to investing in a lot of the wrong channels. What I have done today is try to illustrate that visually with this beautiful funnel. I know, I know, it looks a little complex. You're going to go, "Boy, that is really colorful and you must have taken a long time to draw those lines." I did.

But think about things this way. Let's imagine the flow of visitors to your website. What happens is there are some visitors who are coming to you for the first time. Never seen your site before, you're sort of capturing them early in the stage. Maybe they know very little about you. Maybe they've heard something about you through word of mouth. Maybe they saw someone tweet a link. Maybe they found you through a search. Maybe they found you through just typing in your web address directly or through an email someone sent them. Whatever the case might be, you can track all of those. You know where they come from. I've simplified this. Obviously, there are more channels and you could break these up into direct, search, social, RSS, your blog, and referring links. Referring links from sort of the blogosphere, the news world, forums, links on other corporate sites, whatever it is. There could be advertising things in here too, but I am going to ignore paid for the moment.

What's interesting is when you think about this, think about the people who come to you for the first time and how you capture them. Those channels might be entirely different from the people who way down here at the bottom of this funnel completed a transaction that was worth money. So these are people who made me directly dollars or Euros or whatever . . . Euros. Is that the Euros symbol? I don't know. Let's do the yen symbol. I know that one better. Made you cold hard cash. Excellent. Great.

But what happens? Marketers almost always, and particularly the higher up you go in a marketing organization, they look at what sent traffic here and that's where they assign the budget. Right? Because they're tracking actions down here and they go, "Oh, well, fantastic. You know, these people down here, look at this. Social in green sent no completed transactions, screw social. Stop wasting your time on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Google+. Those are a waste of time, because look, they didn't send us any transactions." Oh yeah? How did all these people know to subscribe to your RSS feed? How did they know to come from referring links? How did they know to type in your web address directly? How did they know to search for you? Particularly if this is branded and unbranded search, if I break that our right here, I bet this is going to be 90%+ branded search, meaning people who searched for your brand name or items related to your brand name, not unbranded terms that they've never heard of before and aren't familiar with. Because of this, you attribute revenue and people and time to places that they shouldn't go, and this is a very, very dangerous thing.

So let's walk through the funnel. I think that everyone who has Google Analytics or something more advanced installed can build this out. In fact, I built this for SEOmoz's own website recently. I'll give Kenny a screenshot to put in the Whiteboard Friday of that specific image that I built. It's not very advanced, but it can give you a sense of what ours sort of looks like. So, you can take a count of the first-time visitors. So, it's like, oh, I've got a million first time visitors in the last 60 days, and maybe I have 750,000 returning visitors in the last 60 days. How many people made 4+ visits in the last 60 days? Well, that's interesting. You can segment. You can create a segment that's says, "Hey, only show me people who have visited 4 or more times in the last 60 days, and now show me the channels that they came through. Show me the referring sources of those individuals." Wow. Now I can start to see a pattern emerging. I can see, oh look at this. This was actually true for SEOmoz. RSS very little at first time, bigger at referring, and then a nice segment, a really nice segment, right down to completed transaction where people don't really come through RSS very much when they complete a transaction.

You can do this. Let's say there's 300,000 who came in the last 60 days 4 or more times, and maybe there's 100,000 who came 10+ times. Wow. These people are really interesting. Particularly these people are really interesting because they must really like what you have. They must like your content or your blog or something that you do on your site, some sort of tool, some sort of function that you provide to them. Yet, there's going to be a very different look at who sent these visitors, right, which of these sources sent these visitors versus which sent the people who made a conversion action, something like signed up for an email account, or signed up with their email address, or subscribed to your newsletter, or filled out a survey, or filled out a request for a white paper that gave you a lead versus actually completed a transaction, like went back to the site and signed up for the paid service or bought the product, or did whatever it is that makes you money. Knowing these source differences and building out this funnel, visualizing this funnel and being able to see these means that you will be able to do a bunch of things right.

So, I have some action items that I want you to take away from this inbound marketing funnel visualization.

Number one, please, if you can do nothing else, at least set up first touch attribution. So you may not be able to get the concrete segment that has made at least one visit from this source before converting somewhere in their funnel, because a lot of those people who convert down here are going to be in the 10+ or 4+ visit segment, and they're going to have come to you multiple times, and usually you're only doing last touch attribution, meaning you only see the source that sent them the last time. There are some more advanced analytics like Mixpanel or KISSmetrics that can help you see deeper into that multitouch funnel, but at least you can set up first touch attribution tracking in Google Analytics. There is a good blog post on how to do that Will Critchlow from Distilled wrote. We'll link you over to that.

Second step, segment the content that is driving people, so not just the visit sources, but the content that's driving people early on in your funnel and later in your funnel. Understanding that dichotomy will give you a sense of, hey, we can't just give up on the content that's bringing people in here or the content that's bringing people in the 4+, 10+, made a converting action. We need to focus on both of those, and here's how we should be distributing our time. Let's not spend, you know, be careful not to over assign value with resources of any kind, with dollars, with people, with time, to channels that are just getting you into the bottom of the funnel. It's really, really dangerous. It can mean that what happens over time is you increase conversion rate here, yeah, and things are going well, but as this dries up, your competitors are taking this traffic. They are getting it one way or another. Or you're not executing on it, which means no one is happy and finding what they need on the Web from you or whatever it is that you provide.

Finally, the other thing is track those actions that are likely to lead to transactions. So, if you know that a high percentage of people in a certain bucket, in a number of visits bucket, in a number of visits to specific content bucket, in a conversion-like action, say they did this thing like sign up for an email newsletter, track the percent and the number that are flowing down to actual dollar value transactions. If you do that, you'll have a great sense of where you can invest sort of in the middle of the funnel that will help to drive that action further down.

This is a complex fascinating process, and I know it's not easy to implement. But for those of you who do, the returns can be phenomenal.

Thanks very much, and I hope I'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

My first takeaway - and a fundament in our job - is that doing inbound without measuring it is like walking with your eyes blind folded; you may perceive things, but not knowing if you are really going in the right direction.

But I'd like to ask your opinion calling into the discussion the Avinash point of view, which he resumed quite effectively with the phrase: first attribution is like attributing the fact I am married to my wife because of my first girlfriend when was a boy.

I remember I asked him about first attribution last year in a conference, and Avinash answered that the real problem is not the first attribution, but all the attributions along the path from the first visit to the last and converting one. And the new Multi Funnel function of Google Analytics answers (not making a judgement about how well or not) to that problem.

By the way, apart the doubts I have about the real effectiveness of first attribution, I totally agree with you in creating this "timeline" funnel, especially to not only understand what helps you being discovered, but also, if not especially, what makes you especially attractive that people want to return on your site.

€ - I almost had it! Yes - I agree that multi-touch is great, but for those who can't get at it as well as those who want to understand where they're earning their loyal visitors, the visits number breakdown in the funnel can provide value, too.

I'm not sure I completely stand by Avinash's "first touch" analogy though. I'd say it's like attributing my marriage to riding the bus (since I met my wife while riding the bus). If I had met lots of wives on that bus, and I wanted to keep getting married (the analogy's breaking down, but stick with me), knowing that buses are good places to first meet eventual wives is indeed good information. :-)

Interesting analogy with the bus and marriage, but I am not sure I agree. What else could we put value on, if we considered a 'multi-touch point' instead of 'first touch'. The coffee shops and restaurants and all the dates between the 'bus' and the final vows?Without the bus, the wife might as well have been just another girl living in this world :) The dates in between just strengthens what truly starts on the bus.

A way to solve the problem you are stating is, in my opinion, the following:

If you can figure out howmuch a conversion-like action or a x time returing visitor is worth to your company/client, it is possible to assign value to this action. For example if 100 people sign up for the newsletter and arround 5% of this group eventually convert with an order average of lets say 100 dollars. The average value per signup would be 100 dollars.

By tracking these micro conversions and their traffic sources, its possible to track howmuch value these micro conversion add to your company and which traffic sources add the most value.

Thanks, Rand. Hmmm.. I'm immediately thinking about this info from branding perspective. "Screw social..waste of time" (light bulb)... the notion of 'curation' may also apply to branding.

Think of a brand as a hotel or country club, where converted consumers regularly reside (it's not the Hotel California - they can leave whenevs). You may start to get comfortable, enjoying the commerce and ego boost from the presence of regulars, those who shape your community.

You are all inside by the fire, enjoying libations, discussing what type of music SEOs listen to or whatever varitety of discussion strikes your community's fancy. All the while, you begin neglecting the inroads to your hotel (why immediately think of them? Your community is having a merry ole time at present 'inside') - you stop plowing the roads, the exterior decor fades...

Your competition starts tending to those inroads your club neglected, catching all your once-potentially-new club-goers at the beginning of the cycle (as your brand once did).

After some time, your brand comes to, looking around to see a strange reality of what the brand 'thought' was. You've forgotten about brand curation! Branding ushered a great community forth but you forgot to curate the process... You forgot; you've "always been the caretaker," branding is continuous and demands ongoing curation. Don't forget to maintain the 'entire' brand real estate, ensuring consumers (at all points of the cycle) receive the necessary attention. Have a good weekend, all.

Interesting question, in fact based on user behavior data in terms of nth Visit we will be able to identify the type of keyword that got the visit.

For example, for the first visit, we can get the number of visits for (not provided) and then segregate them into branded and non branded. I mean the segregation will be hypothetical and for safety ill assume 50 – 50%

However that should ideally not be the case with the second level and third level visit as someone who landed on our website the first time via a keyword, would most probably land on our website again using a brand term instead of a non branded term.

This way we will actually be able to break down/segregate the not provided data into Non Branded and Branded Visits. The data will not be accurate but at least we will have some breakdown and understanding of the number of branded and non branded visits.

I think investing hours on GA and getting tons of solid data out of it is a great investment because if you get the real data from it this will eventually help you save your tons of dollars (that you really want) and increase the rate of conversion.

Having an Inbound marketing funnel is important to a higher extend and one of the strong reason I see is that it tremendously reduce down the level of assumptions and put down some hardcore data from which a business can decide about what to do next in terms of investment or what are the best online channels to invest in the coming months... This can be Social Media, SEO, Blogging, Email Marketing and more...(freezing paid for a while)

Asif Dilshad have linked to some great links that can help you create Multi Channel Funnel for your website!

Great WBF. Now if only I could track conversions. 99% of my conversions are a phone call and my phone number is at the top of each page. I could limit the phone number to the contact page, but then my site would be less useful. Any thoughts?

Track your phone calls. Services like Mongoose Metrics or Dial800 provide you with a many toll-frees that re-direct to you and they can track the calls at deep level, including the 'keyword' used to find your site and make the call.

i´m frequently watching your videos. Great stuff and very useful. For a few weeks now I´m unable to watch them - all i see is a black box, the transcription below and everything else is fine. I tried in several browsers and in logged-in and not-logged-in mode but still the black box. Can anyone help.

As usual, great stuff Rand! This is such an important analysis most marketing leaders overlook. In our organization, I take it to the next level of closed loop analysis/reporting where conversion is not a linear process and is a longer sales cycle. I start with the first touch and conclude at the last touch and everything in-between. So, in most instances, it goes beyond web analytics data to include various other marketing touch points that has an influence on the final conversion. I call this "cradle to close (TM)" analysis! What you described is great for web based transactions and ecommerce sites.

THis is a great post, I think SEOmoz should just build a tool that can calculated all this, after all promembers do have the option to incorporate their Google Analytics into SEOmoz, why not build a funnel tool?

I haven't yet used the Multi-Channel Funnels in GA yet. So, watching your WBF, I'm assuming you can track the information you outlined using these reports? (I'm guessing "yes, but" one must customize, too)

This is where Omniture has a big leg on Analytics, in my opinion--especially if you're an organization with a long sales cycle. Also is beneficial to organizations who work in a vertical where the lifetime value of a customer is crucially important (non-profits, for example).

Analytics, despite some of the limited work-arounds, is primarily a last touch anaytics platform. Omniture, if used properly, really allows you to grasp a holistic view into what makes your users convert.

I like the concept, but the funnel is displayed strangely to me. The channel share is shown in proportion but the size of each step of the funnel is not in proportion & therefore doesnt show the overall value of each layer

They are all important customer touch points, but it is hard to see them as a funnel e.g. First time visits doesn't map to last touch before conversion for me. Or maybe thats not important and just being on top of this type of data is a big plus

I would not like to advertise here, but the first thought while watching this video was something I have read over Neil Patel's blog.kissmetrics.com. Unfortunately I don't remember which post was it, but the idea was the following (as I remember): most people confirm that their website converts in 2% of the visits and don't ask themselfs why the other 98% doesn't.

If you watch the WBF over again, you will most probably answer this question for yourself, for your boss and for your customer.

Thanks Rand for sharing these with us, I will point this video out to our team.

Now I’m trying to figure out the most applicable version of this for content only sites that monetize solely through ad revenue. I suppose there are two simple answers, one being direct ad sales and the other being pageviews based on a CPM model. I think the actual conversion would be increased visits/pageviews per user. I think the goal is to get more visits/pageviews per user therefore equating into the conversion with increase revenue. But it just seems like there is something deeper to this, maybe a better metric for content only.

Perhaps the number of direct sales would be the conversion; I guess that would make more sense. Then using this funnel you would actually be able to set goals and targets to filter out the consumers leaving only the advertisers, thus tracking the best sources to get new direct sales leads.

The inbound marketing sales funnel is a science itself. We recently became a hubspot partner and started building out this funnel in our own inbound marketing strategy.

I think Rand made a great point that there needs to be different types of content and a different strategy for each step in the funnel people are on. The content you create to hook brand new people is going to be drastically different than the content you create for that 10+ visitor group and finding an effective way to distribute that content is key.

Neat way to visualize your data. I just set up a similar style graph in Google Docs. A simplified version that just uses Search, Referraal, and Direct; and it just shows the percentages based on 100%, instead of the varying width down the funnel. Not that yours is exactly to scale.

Anyways, it made me realize that a lot of return visitors are using Referral channels to come back to the site. They must be seeing a link somewhere and re-using it to come back to the site.. interesting.

Quick question for you: Taking seomoz as an example where your website serves as a forum for both customers and prospects, how do you distinguish one from the other in the funnel across the channels? For example, since I might be hooked up with your social media channels (and many other fellow mozzers are), couldn't that be muddying up your results about how effective social media is since paying customers are funneling back to your site and mixing in with prospects?

Multi-touch would definitely help, but we're also thinking long term about the industry, our customer base and branding, so building a large following of passionate consumers of information is nearly as important as direct customer acquisition. People aren't going to get sophisticated enough about SEO and inbound marketing channels without education, and since there's no formal system for that at scale today, bringing 2 million visits to the site is definitely a way for us to grow long term (and, hopefully, a way to help the industry itself move forward, too).